Nike
History Nike is an american sports company founded by Philip Knights and Bill Bowerman, selling track running shoes. When it was founded 25th of January 1964 it was called The Blue Ribbon, but changed it’s name in 1971 to Nike. Nike has headquarters in Oregon, near Beaverton, and is a worldwide brand, engaged in sale of footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories and services. In it’s first year of business, they were cooperating with a japanese company, Onitsuka Tiger, and sold 1300 shoes, grossing 8000 dollars. The shoes were produced in Japan in order to get a cheaper production rate. In the years coming they grew quickly and in 1966 they got their first retail store in Santa monica, California. In 1971 The Blue Ribbon’s cooperation with Onitsuka Tiger, came to an end, so they came up with their entirely own shoe-line. In the years following they grew quick, and now they are selling all sports merchandise. Nike is one of the leading brands within their group of sales with their slogan “JUST DO IT”. Nike is seen everywhere in sports world. For example the company pays professional athletes to wear their merchandise for advertisement, but that doesn’t have to be necessary because, as previously stated, Nike is one of the most profited companies within sports merchandise in the world. Working conditions Nike has been collaborating with companies across american borders, in Asia, after their former collaboration with Onitsuka Tiger in Japan. The collaborating companies takes care of the production of the merchandise.This is hard labour for the workers, and the companies have been criticized for using workshop abuse at the factories producing their products in countries such as China, Vietnam and Mexico. Companies contracted by Nike have reportedly been violating minimum wage, and overtime laws in Vietnam. This was discovered in 1996, and made a big commotion. Although nike has claimed to have stopped this, there are still cases where this is happening. For example, in Indonesia, there has been research in the Nike sweatshops as late as 2009, manufacturing Nike merchandise. The workers in these sweatshops, portrayed in Indonesia work up to sixteen hours a day, in order to afford some of their necessities for themselves and their family. They usually live in inadequate villages, with no room in their “houses”. Their children are breathing in toxic gasses because of the spillage from the factories. The average wage of the workers are about seven thousand rupiahs which equals about one point six dollars. The money Nike saves on their mal paid employes, is supposedly used for “topnotch” advertising, which makes them profit even more as a company. This is not all, Nike has also been accused of doing child labor in Cambodia and Pakistan during the 1990’s. This is said to have been drastically decreased after a speech held in 1998 by former CEO, Philip Knight. Apparently he was worried that the sale’s rate would decrease, and in order to keep the sale’s statistics according to plan, Nike created the Fair Labor Association. This is a non-profitable association made to keep the workers’ workplace safer. The circumstances has improved to some extent. For example, there has been a decrease in physical violence committed by supervisors on their workers.' ' Nike is a company which hold a lot of power, thus can take advantage of collaborating companies’ workers, in a much broader extent than smaller, less commercial brands can. This results in taking advantage of that and put innocent workers through violation of several laws causing them to live in poverty. Written by Maria sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike,_Inc. http://borgenproject.org/nike-strives-to-overcome-sweatshop-abuse/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuLYeaGE908 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-keady/when-will-nike-just-do-it_b_308448.html